West Bengal: Left on top

The Congress(I) election machinery, which appeared to have become grounded forever, just about managed to take off following Indira Gandhi's whirlwind tour of West Bengal.

advertisement

Sumanta Sen

October 12, 2013

ISSUE DATE: May 31, 1982

UPDATED: August 7, 2014 18:19 IST

The Congress(I) election machinery, which appeared to have become grounded forever, just about managed to take off following Indira Gandhi's whirlwind tour of West Bengal. As she flew over the length and breadth of the state in her Air Force helicopter, questions were once again being asked whether she would leave in her wake a wave, if not big enough to see her party back in office, at least sufficient to carry a fair number to the shore.

Heavily dependent for their success on the prime minister's charisma, her partymen in West Bengal started speculating last fortnight about bagging around 70 seats. This would not only mean a considerable reduction in strength of the ruling Left Front but also a loss of face as its leaders, like Promode Das Gupta, have been predicting that the Front would get more than the 234 it won five years ago when the Congress had won in only 20 of the 294 constituencies.

Yet, as things stood less than a fortnight before the May 19 polls, the speculation appeared to be rather wild. For one thing, it was based on the assumption that in a large number of places the very sight of their leader would sway people in favour of the Congress(I).

But what actually happened was different: at Diamond Harbour, for instance, she addressed a very thin audience which clearly was more interested in her helicopter than in her speech, whose frequent references to the grave international situation and dangers posed by right reaction were hardly of any relevance to an essentially rural crowd whose primary concern is how to grow a second crop.

Even then the party could have tried to capitalise on her visit, but this was obviously far too strenuous a task for an organisation continuing to suffer from a total lack of discipline.

Jyoti Basu: Easy wicket

Dissatisfaction: Almost a stone's throw away from Diamond Harbour is Satgachhia, a constituency from where Marxist Chief Minister Jyoti Basu is seeking re-election for the second time. He is being opposed by Dinabandhu Bairagi, a local man selected by the Congress(I), and even 10 days before the elections Bairagi's posters were hard to come by though Basu's name glittered on every wall.

Bairagi's men were clearly not keen on the job as money had been slow to reach them from Calcutta - each Congress candidate has been allotted Rs 40,000 which was being doled out in instalments, much to the dissatisfaction of many.

Basu had won by a margin of 38,000 in 1977 and this time his campaign managers hope to add another 10,000 to the difference. The chief minister himself has addressed only one election meeting in his constituency having been busy in the rest of the state and also Kerala.

Next to Basu the most sought after speaker in the Left Front this time is Finance Minister Ashok Mitra, fighting it out again from the middle class-dominated Calcutta constituency of Rash Behari Avenue.

Initially, there were doubts about Mitra's future, particularly as in the last Lok Sabha elections the Marxist candidate had fared badly in this segment and Mitra did not exactly become popular with his action against Sanchaita Chit Fund, which has left a large number without their easy money every month.

Election graffiti in Calcutta: Foregone conclusion for the Left Front

Yet the infighting in the Congress(I), which led to the selection of Haimi Bose, a doctor and former communist who was expelled from the CPI-M, has done the finance minister a world of good, particularly as a fair number of Congress(I) workers are showing no interest in working for the party candidate.

True, Mitra continues to face tricky questions on the Sanchaita issue but even then the excellent organisation of his party and popular disgust at the openly bickering Congressmen should see him through. In a constituency where personality considerations also count to a fair extent, Mitra also enjoys an added advantage by virtue of his reputation as a brilliant student and writer.

Blatant Bickering: While throughout the state the Congress(I) continues to suffer from infighting, nowhere perhaps is it so blatant as in the North Calcutta constituency of Jorabagan where party candidate Subrata Mukherjee faces a challenge not only from the Left Front but from Ila Roy, who only the other day belonged to the Congress(I) but turned rebel on failing to secure the ticket and went on to file her nomination with the support of the Janata.

She is the widow of former Congress strongman Nepal Roy and her followers are on record that if Subrata Mukherjee wishes to induct musclemen from outside then they will teach him the lesson of his life. The questions being raised at Jorabagan last fortnight were related not so much to the outcome of the polls but to the possibility of a major showdown between official and rebel Congressmen.

Fears of trouble also persist in other parts of the state, particularly in districts like Bankura, Purulia and Midnapore where the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, an electoral ally of the Congress(I), has become fairly active recently, and in Nadia where Naxalites are again making their presence felt and are urging people to stay away from the polls.

With these dangers in mind the state Government had sought an additional 27 battalions of the Central Reserve Police Force but is getting less than half of that. Incidentally, while Mrs Gandhi repeatedly warned against divisive forces in her West Bengal meetings her state party had no qualms in allying with the Jharkhandis who have been urging tribals to wage a militant movement for a separate tribal state.

Full Sway: Taking the state as a whole the Left Front appears to be in total command of the four major industrial and agricultural districts west of the river Hooghly - Howrah, Hooghly, Burdwan and Birbhum - where the Marxists' organisational strength and the fairly commendable job done by the elected panchayats leave little to fear from the Opposition.

In fact, in Burdwan Congress(I) stalwart Bhola Sen himself is in danger of missing the bus this time. Sen had wanted a safer Calcutta seat for himself but could not keep pace with the wranglings over these constituencies and decided to take a chance with his old seat.

In the rest of the state the Left Front faces pockets of challenge posed not so much by any organised strength of the Opposition as the individual popularity of candidates belonging to those parties, particularly the Congress(I). The Janata, the other party of any significance, is in far too-great a shambles to be of any serious concern.

And with opinion polls in newspapers giving the Left Front a clear edge over the others it appears that the combined strength of the Opposition will continue to remain an insignificant minority but with this vital difference: a fair number of the traditionally non-Left seats which the Janata had bagged five years ago may this time go to the Congress(I).

Get real-time alerts and all the news on your phone with the all-new India Today app. Download from